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THE BEST WAY OF DEALING WITH XENOPHOBIA

The New York Times asked me to contribute to a debate, on its online ‘Room for Debate’ pages, on the prospects for the far right in Europe in the wake of the Anders Breivik massacre. The original question was ‘Is Europe becoming more fertile ground for rightwing movements with anti-immigrant sentiments?’ In the end the Times ran the debate under the headline ‘Will the Norway Massacre Deflate Europe’s Right Wing’? My response is primarily to the first question, rather than to the second.

Far right and populist parties have made major gains in many European countries. Such movements have certainly fed off a diet of racism, anti-Muslim prejudice and anti-immigrant sentiment. It would be simplistic, however, to explain the advance of populism and the far right simply as an expression of an aggressive new climate of racism and Islamophobia. It would be more simplistic still to suggest that such a climate would inevitably create a horror such as the Oslo massacre.

Far right parties throughout Europe draw upon two distinct constituencies. The first is a core of hardline racist bigots– many of these parties, such as the British National Party and the Sweden Democrats emerged out of the neo-fascist swamp and many still live there. The bigots have, however, been joined by a swathe of new supporters whose hostility towards immigrants, minorities and Muslims is shaped less by old-fashioned racism than by a newfangled sense of fear and insecurity. Many have traditionally supported social democratic parties but feel abandoned by organizations that have largely cut links with their working class constituencies. Polls have shown that, even more than the rest of the population, such supporters appear dissatisfied with their lives, anxious about the future, and distrustful of any figure of authority.

There is little that can be done to sway the opinions of the hardline racists. We need, however, politically to engage with the wider support that now surrounds far right organizations. This does not mean pandering to their prejudices. It means, to the contrary, challenging those prejudices openly and robustly. It means, for instance, rebutting the idea that immigration is responsible for the lack of jobs and housing, or that lower immigration would mean a lower crime rate, or that Western societies are becoming ‘Islamized’.

Most mainstream politicians have, however, taken the opposite approach, responding to the advance of the far right not by challenging its prejudices but by appropriating its arguments, believing that the only way to stem support for such groups is by promising to further cut back on immigration, to step up deportation of asylum seekers, and to curtail civil liberties. ‘We know we need to target immigrants’, seems to be the argument, ‘but only respectable politicians should be allowed to do that, not those who belong to far-right organizations.’ It is an approach that can only deepen the belief that Europe’s social problems stem from too much immigration and so strengthen the hand of reactionary figures.

The question many Europeans are asking is ‘How can we stop the far right?’. The question they should be asking is ‘How can we challenge anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic sentiment?’ The answers to the two question may seem to be the same. They are not necessarily so. The danger is that in being obsessed by the first question rather than by the second, politicians help strengthen, not weaken, xenophobic attitudes.

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One comment

Thank you for this excellent piece. You are exactly in line with the report “Living Together: Combining Diversity and Freedom in 21st Century Europe”, submitted to the Council of Europe in May this year by a Group of Eminent Persons chaired by Joschka Fischer. (See the Council of Europe website.) Please encourage people to read this report, discuss it, and above all act on it. (Disclosure: I was the rapporteur!)
Edward Mortimer